Here’s a question for you: For what purposes should a ministry use a blog or an email newsletter for communication purposes?

Dr. Wilson addresses that same question: Where Blogs and E-Zines Overlap

I was having this discussion with a co-worker the other day. Here’s my take: (which is why you came here, right?

Both are great tools for communication. Dr. Wilson sums it up well. I agree with him. But what his brevity omits something I feel strongly about. At this point in this tech age, we should do both…or at least offer both eNewsletters and RSS. I come to this conclusion because we have lots of great content to communicate, right? But the problem with web technology is that it is always a challenge to get people to come to the site to read the valuable content.

A website is a “pull” technology where RSS and eNewsletters are a “push” technology. How do you pull someone to a site? Well, there’s all sorts of marketing issues to cover but in short, it’s great quality, great functionality, and great marketing practices all working together. But even if you have all those great things, people may not come back…or get bored of coming back.

Enter the push technologies. While a website is fully public, push technologies are in a sense private. They are subscribers. They are people who have asked, “Please send me your valuable content” or “Please keep me updated.” Push technology does this. A blog is a website and suffers from the exact same problems a traditional website has in the pull technology characteristics. However, a blog incorporates a push technology. RSS is built right in!

My point here is that people want to subscribe to your content in a few ways. eNewsletters are the preferred method right now. Some are learning about RSS and how to subscribe that way. In the meantime, I suggest we offer both. Use a blog to record and collect content and thoughts. Let people subscribe to that feed. In addition, provide an eNewsletter for them.

Don’t rely on a blog or website to pull people in. There are things to do to pull them in, but don’t be happy with just that. We also need to push content to those wanting to receive it.